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“It’s a woman’s—”
She held up a hand to stop him. “Liam, don’t make this ugly. It’s a beautiful piece. Your mother will adore it.”
She turned back to the painting. The way Aubrey looked at it—with parted lips and flushed cheeks—was the same way she’d looked at him before they’d exchanged names and again right before he’d kissed her. The air in the room thickened. He shoved his hands through his hair. He should call her a cab before sexual attraction and thoughts of this … erotic picture overrode his good sense.
His brain and his mouth took opposite paths. “Can I take your jacket and get you a glass of wine?”
She hesitated, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. Her gaze traveled to the door and back to him as if she, too, were weighing the wisdom of staying. “Yes.”
Politeness demanded he step forward and help her remove her blazer, but watching her shimmy out of the black garment impeded the blood flow to his cerebral cortex. Mesmerized, he watched one bare shoulder appear and then the other. Her camisole top with its pencil-thin straps clung lovingly to her slender figure.
He’d noticed her sensuality at the pub. Her interpretation of the painting confirmed it. Aubrey Holt was undoubtedly the sexiest woman Liam had ever encountered. He’d never experienced such strong magnetism in his life. Who she was didn’t dampen his response in the slightest.
Desire pulsed heavily in his groin and tightened his rib cage, making it impossible to draw a deep breath. She extended her arm with the jacket in her hand. Liam took it. Without turning he pitched the garment in the direction of the sofa, curled his fingers around her waist and pulled her forward until her body pressed flush against his. Aubrey’s breath hitched a second before his mouth covered hers.
Her lips parted immediately, welcoming and meeting the thrust of his tongue. She tasted better than the finest wine in his collection. Her arms wound around his neck, pulling him closer, pressing her breasts against his chest.
He usually dated petite women, usually had to bend himself in half for a kiss, but Aubrey rose on her tiptoes and their bodies aligned perfectly. Breast to chest. Thigh to thigh. Her feminine mound cradled his erection and when she arched her back and ground against him, electricity crackled down to his toes, up to his skull and back again to settle hot and heavy below his belt. He cupped her tight buttocks and pushed back, relishing the way her whimper filled his lungs.
Skin. He needed skin. He raked his hands upward, dragging the hem of her top from her skirt, and then he found the warm satin of her waist and the ridge of her spine with his fingertips. She shivered in his arms and drew back to gasp. He dipped his head, burying his face in the juncture of her neck and shoulder, tasting her sweetness, inhaling her heady fragrance, feeling her rapid pulse against his tongue. His heart hammered as if he’d raced up the stairs to the twenty-fifth floor of the EPH building. His lungs burned. And he ached to lose himself in the dewy center of the woman in his arms.
Desire. That’s it. That’s what the painting represented. A woman on the brink of desire.
A single brain cell broke through the surface of the testosterone flooding him. This was Aubrey. Aubrey Holt. The enemy’s daughter. Liam drew back, breathing heavily, and looked into Aubrey’s passion-darkened eyes. This wasn’t love. It was pure, unadulterated lust. He’d experienced lust before, but never like this, never this potent, never this intoxicating. “Aubrey?”
He hoped like hell she had the strength to end this, because he didn’t think he did. Her damp lips quivered. She blinked as if trying to clear the haze from her heavy-lidded, dark-lashed eyes, and then she lowered her gaze and her hands to his waist. But instead of pushing him away, she yanked his shirttails from his pants.
Liam sucked in a sharp breath. Every muscle in his body clenched rock hard as she bared his chest one button at a time. When she spread her palms and swept them over his skin, he shuddered and then quickly lifted his arms above his head to unfasten his cuff links. He pitched them onto the end table with a clatter and then his shirt hit the floor. Her fingers fumbled with his belt and he nearly lost it.
Catching her wrists, he stilled her hands and then released her and reached for her top. He whisked it over her head and groaned at what he discovered. No bra. Dark puckered tips crested her small breasts, and his mouth watered in anticipation of tasting her. She lifted her hands as if to cover herself, but he beat her to it, covering her warm flesh. Her nipples prodded his palms. He caressed her in a circular motion and the taut tips beaded even harder. Each circle coiled something achy and tight deep inside him.
Aubrey’s head fell back on a moan. Her fingers tangled in his hair and she tugged. Liam didn’t refuse the invitation. He bent, stroked his tongue over her sensitive tip, raked her gently with his teeth and then suckled deeply. Her nails dug into his shoulders. He transferred his attention to the opposite breast and rubbed slick fingers over the one he’d abandoned.
Her knees buckled. Liam caught her up in his arms and carried her to his bedroom. One, because he wanted to savor every inch of her. Two, because he needed condoms. He’d long since outgrown the need to carry them in his wallet. His affairs these days, though few and far between, were planned like dessert after dinner. He never had lunch and an unexpected afternoon delight. Maybe the surprise factor explained why Aubrey had hit him so hard.
The love bite she planted on his neck derailed his train of thought. He almost walked into a wall. Her teeth teased his earlobe seconds before her tongue traced his ear. Embers ignited in his gut. He quickened his stride, reached his bedroom and set her on her feet beside his bed. He hadn’t bothered to open the drapes this morning, but a sliver of afternoon sunlight seeped through the gap between them, slashing across his bed like a laser pointer indicating, “Here. Now.”
No kidding. The ray of light was much easier to understand than a painting about female body parts.
Liam sat down on the micro suede comforter and turned Aubrey around so that her back faced him. He strung a line of openmouthed kissed along her vertebrae while his suddenly clumsy fingers fumbled to release the back button and zip of her pencil skirt. The skirt crumpled to the floor. He vaguely registered her kicking it and her shoes aside, but his gaze was fastened on her bottom in—heaven help him—a thong and nothing else. Black. Satiny. Tiny. He traced the waistband and then the strip between her cheeks. Goose bumps rose on her pale skin. His blood rushed south, leaving him dizzy with desire and gasping for breath. Impatient, he hooked the black bands with his thumbs and pushed them down her legs.
She stepped out and turned. Like a kid with a giant ice-cream sundae, Liam could only stare, not knowing where to start or which flavor to sample first. His hands found her breasts. His mouth skimmed her belly, edging downward in sips and nips toward her tangled brown curls. She trembled. The tiny quakes traveled up his arms, through his lips. He lifted his head and met her slumberous gaze.
“Please,” she whispered. “I need to touch you, too.”
An offer too good to refuse. Liam rose.
Aubrey tackled his belt and then the hook of his slacks. Her knuckles dragged across his erection as she lowered his zipper, and stars exploded behind his tightly closed lids. She shoved his pants and briefs down his thighs. He distracted himself from her mind-numbing caresses by mapping her slight curves with his hands, learning her body the way a blind man reads Braille, by feel. He found the crisp curls and delved into the slick moisture they concealed.
Her gasped “Yes” encouraged him to stroke long and slow until he discovered her magic spot, and then he teased her with short, quick brushes over the swollen flesh before dipping deeper. She arched into his touch, pressed hungry kisses along his jaw, until he covered her mouth with his and mimicked the thrust of his fingers with his tongue.
She clung to his shoulders as release shuddered through her. Her cries filled his mouth and then she collapsed against him, skin to skin. Liam slowly eased his fingers from her dampness and ripped back the bedding. When he turned around again, Aubrey was on her knees in front of him, her passion-glazed eyes gazing up at him.
He ground his molars, clenched his fists and prayed she’d give him a second to recover before she touched him. If she didn’t, his afternoon delight would be over in a nanosecond. He didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of lasting if she put her mouth on him.
Three
At the pub Aubrey had tagged Liam as buff, blond and built. The description didn’t begin to do justice to the man in front of her. Liam hadn’t developed those thick muscles sitting behind a desk. He worked out.
Aubrey skated her palms up his hair-roughened calves and thighs. His long, thick erection jerked as she brushed past the tangle of wiry dark blond curls to shove on his hips so he’d sit down. Liam sat, knees splayed but cuffed by his pants at his ankles. Aubrey debated leaning in for a taste of him, but the urgency pulsing through her veins insisted she hurry rather than linger. Judging by the taut tendons of Liam’s neck, she knew he teetered just as close to the edge of control as she.
She quickly removed his shoes, socks and pants and tossed them aside. Bracing her hands on his thighs, she levered herself to stand before him. The desire in his eyes poured over her like heated oil, burning, but in a good way. An incredibly arousing, blood-boiling way. Not something she’d previously experienced.
He lifted her hands, sketched a nerve-tingling erotic kiss in each palm with his tongue and then transferred her hands to his shoulders. His satiny skin stretched tight over corded muscle. She couldn’t resist tracing each swell and crevice, and raking her fingers through the coils of burnished gold spattering his chest.
Liam’s hot mouth found one breast. His talented fingers teased the other. When he devoured her that way, stroked and molded her that way, Aubrey didn’t feel inadequate, unwomanly. Despite the breathtaking release he’d just given her, her body tightened once again, hungry for more. “Please, Liam. I can’t wait.”
He lifted his head, his gaze locking with hers, and then he reached for the bedside table, opened the drawer and extracted a square packet.
Condoms. She’d forgotten. So unlike her. But then everything about today was beyond her realm. She’d never fallen in instant lust, never become intimate with a near stranger.
He slowly rose, sliding inch by inch of his hot skin against hers. For heart-stopping seconds his shaft burned against her navel and then he leaned back and ripped the packet open with his teeth.
Aubrey stroked his back, his waist, his firm buttocks, bringing her hands around to curl her fingers around his thickness and cup the heaviness below. Her thumb found a slick droplet and smoothed it over his silky skin.
His breath whistled through clenched teeth. He muttered a curse and ground out, “Enough.”
He brushed her hands aside, donned protection and urged her onto the bed. With one foot still on the floor, Aubrey leaned back across the oyster-colored sheets and lifted a hand, beckoning him into her arms. The mattress dipped under his weight. His hands, hot and slightly rough, cupped her bottom and lifted as he stood beside the bed and positioned himself. Aubrey’s breath caught in anticipation and then gushed from her lungs as he plunged deeply, filling her with a solid thrust.
He withdrew and thrust again and again. She arched to meet him and then reached up and curled her fingers around his nape to pull him closer. Liam planted his hands beside her head. His molten blue gaze locked with hers and his biceps bulged as he slowly lowered until his chest hairs teased her breasts. His breath stirred the fine hairs on her neck and then finally, finally, his lips sealed hers. She hooked one leg around his hips, drawing him back each time he withdrew and urging him to go faster and deeper as everything inside her twisted tighter and she raced toward another climax.
Ecstasy hit hard and fast, rocking her and robbing her breath. She threw her head back and cried out as Liam slammed into her and groaned as his own orgasm undulated over him.
Breathing heavily, he collapsed to his elbows and buried his face beside hers on the bed. Aubrey traced the line of his spine and he shivered against her. The weight of him, the heat of him, blanketed her in a sensual cocoon. A satisfied smile curved her lips and a sense of well-being flooded her, weighting her limbs and her eyelids. Bliss.
Her racing heart and laboring lungs slowed and then with a sudden icy shower her conscience washed away the haze of desire.
What had she done?
She’d taken the enemy to bed and in doing so guaranteed she’d disappoint her father yet again, because she couldn’t sleep with Liam and then betray him.
Aubrey stiffened beneath Liam and then shoved hard against his shoulders. He forced his drained and satiated muscles into action and rolled to her side, reluctantly disengaging from the slick heat of her body.
She pressed her fingers to the pleat between her eyebrows. Regret tightened her features and flattened her luscious, kiss-swollen mouth.
Liam’s stomach clenched as reality sank in.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” Aubrey whispered as she reached for the sheet, dragging it across her body and sliding to the edge of the bed.
“Probably not.” No probably about it. This afternoon had been a mistake. They both knew it. Chalk it up to his unerring ability to choose the wrong woman.
“I have to go.” She clutched the sheet with one hand and reached for her skirt with the other. The bed sheet tethered her inches short of her goal, and she didn’t look like she wanted to release it and let him see her naked. Ridiculous, considering the taste of her still lingered on his lips.
He scooped up her skirt, passed it to her and then raked a hand through his hair. “Aubrey—”
Without looking at him, she held up a hand like a traffic cop. “Please. No post mortems.”
What could he say? There could be no future in any relationship between them. And for the first time in Liam’s life that bothered him. Until now he’d been the king of dead-end-and-damned-happy-about-it relationships.
He rolled his tense shoulders. Blame it on all the new shiny jewelry being shoved in his face at EPH. Wedding and engagement rings had multiplied like bacteria among the staff—Elliotts in particular. His grandfather’s aim might have been to increase productivity with his little competition, but what he’d done was run off employees and cause a rash of romances.
“Would you like to shower first or—”
“No. No, I need to go.” She shimmied her skirt over her long, lean legs and her round, tight, bare butt. Watching her move made his pulse accelerate and his groin tighten all over again.
“Can I call you a cab?”
With her arms crossed over her chest, she shoved her feet into her shoes and bolted out the bedroom door. “No. Thank you.”
He yanked on his pants, ducked into the bathroom to ditch the condom and followed her into the den. She dragged on her top, shrugged on her jacket, snatched up her purse and briefcase and wasted no time hustling toward the door. She still hadn’t looked at him. That stung.
“Aubrey, wait.” He planted a palm on the door, holding it closed.
She paused with her hand on the knob. Her spine remained steel-girder stiff, and she kept her chin tucked as if she wanted to hide from what had just happened.
Well, didn’t that make him feel like a damned prize?
Her scent, a heady floral mingled with hot sex, filled Liam’s lungs as he inhaled. He battled the unaccustomed urge to smooth her tangled hair and straighten the tucked-under collar of her blazer. “We used protection and I’m clean, but if you need anything you have my numbers.”
She turned and met his gaze. Panic and regret darkened her eyes. “I won’t call, Liam. I can’t.”
“Yeah. I guess you’re right. My family’s in enough turmoil without throwing an affair with the enemy’s daughter into the pot.”
Her mouth dropped open and a wounded expression briefly crossed her face before she blinked it away. “The enemy? That’s how you see my father?”
He cursed his clumsy tongue. “Matthew Holt and my grandfather have had a few run-ins. Holt Enterprises and EPH don’t always see eye to eye on how we conduct business.”
“No. No, they don’t. You’re right. I hope your mother likes the painting. Goodbye, Liam.” She yanked open his door and then quietly closed it behind her.
Liam banged his forehead against the wood and then slowly turned to face the painting. Where was his brain? The afternoon shouldn’t have happened. He should have left the pub the minuteAubrey started with her prying questions. He shouldn’t have taken her to the gallery or brought her home for a lesson in Art 101. He sure as hell shouldn’t have taken her to bed. Because today he’d had the best sex of his life and there was absolutely no chance that he’d ever repeat the experience.
He cursed all the way back to his bedroom. Aubrey’s scent clung to his skin and to his bed. Determined to remove all traces of her from his apartment, he ripped off the sheets. As he shoved them into the hamper for his housekeeper to wash, he caught sight of his watch.
Damn. He hadn’t called work to tell them he wouldn’t be returning after his luncheon appointment. A first. He never missed work. Hell, for the past nine months he’d practically lived in the EPH building. He headed for the phone on his bedside table. A sliver of black sticking out from under his bed stopped him in his tracks. He bent and scooped it up. Aubrey’s thong. His pulse rate tripled. He should return it. But how?
Mail? Nah, he didn’t think so.
In person? Hell, no. That would be stepping right back into the fire. He couldn’t risk his family—particularly his grandfather, who believed appearances were everything— finding out about today.
For several seconds he studied the black satin dangling from his fingers and then he crushed the lingerie in his hand and shoved it in his nightstand drawer.
He couldn’t have Aubrey, but he could have the memories of this wild afternoon to fuel his fantasies when the only lover he had was his right hand.
“Happy to have you home again, Mom. I brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate.” Liam set the champagne on the coffee table and bent over the chaise in the den of the family brownstone to kiss his mother’s cheek.
She had a little more color in her face than she’d had when he’d visited her at The Tides a couple of weeks ago, and she’d lost some of the gauntness hollowing her cheeks. Short tufts of newly grown hair, more gray than before, peeked from the scarf she wore over her head.
Liam nodded hello to his father. He and his father had never been close. Michael Elliott had spent too much of Liam’s childhood at work, leaving Liam to rely on his grandfather for mentorship as the years passed.
“You and your wine collection. Thank you.” Karen Elliott shifted her legs to the side and patted the cushion. “Sit down, Liam. It’s good to be home. Your grandparents’ estate is a wonderful place to recuperate, but it’s time for me to get on with life. Besides, you’ve all spent way too much time worrying about me and traipsing out there.”
“Glad to do it. I brought you a surprise.” He ignored her “you-shouldn’t-haves,” retrieved the picture from the foyer where he’d left it and rested the bottom edge of the frame on the sofa. “Dad, could you help me with this?”
“Certainly.” His father stepped forward.
With his father’s assistance Liam removed the paper. The memory of doing the same withAubrey yesterday barged front and center into his thoughts. He set his jaw and deliberately blocked the images as best he could. Which wasn’t so great.
His mother’s gasp was reward enough for the weeks of phone calls Liam had made to nearly every gallery in the Northeast, his pleas with gallery owners and, finally, the letter he’d written to Gilda Raines and sent along with a picture of his mother gazing at one of Gilda’s paintings in the medical center. Seeing his mother’s eyes light up and then fill with happy tears was icing on the cake.
She smiled up at him. “Gilda Raines never sells anything. She donates to hospitals, but she never sells. How did you convince her?”
He shrugged. “I wrote her a letter and told her I needed a gift for a very special lady.”
“Don’t waste your flattery on me, Liam Elliott.” His mother dismissed his words with a wave of her hand, but color seeped into her cheeks.
He didn’t mention that the artist probably wouldn’t have sold him anything if Aubrey hadn’t been with him. He’d seen the refusal in Ms. Raines’s eyes until Aubrey had remarked about the painting being exactly what Liam’s mother needed. He knew because he’d been looking at Gilda instead of the art on the easel.
Liam had a feeling he was supposed to know why the artist had selected this particular piece from her collection and what the painting signified the second he laid eyes on it, and when he hadn’t Gilda’s decision had been made. No sale. But Gilda had taken an instant liking to Aubrey, and Aubrey’s promise to explain the meaning behind the morning glory had changed Gilda’s mind. No doubt about it. He would have walked away empty-handed if not for Aubrey Holt. He owed her. Even the gallery manager had whispered her surprise over the sale— when she’d slipped him her phone number. Not a number he intended using.
His mother carefully eased forward on the cushion until she could stroke the frame. “It’s beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.”
Tears streamed from her eyes and she pressed trembling fingers to her lips. Those were more than happy tears this time. Liam stood by helplessly, but his father immediately took her into his arms and tucked her face to his chest. Did his mother’s emotional reaction have something to do with the way Aubrey had described the painting? Liam’s ears burned and he shifted uneasily. If so, then his parents deserved a moment of privacy.
He propped the frame against the back of the sofa, shoved his hands into his pockets and retreated to the opposite side of the room to look out the window at the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood where he’d grown up. Until he’d moved away, he hadn’t paid much attention to the well-maintained nineteenth-century brownstones lining the shaded street, the wide bluestone sidewalks or decorative ironwork. He hadn’t appreciated that he was only a short train ride from Times Square, Coney Island and Shea Stadium and a Mets baseball game.
While he’d been trapped under the weight of family expectations, his thoughts had been elsewhere. Traveling. Exploring. With his grandfather owning Elliott Publication Holdings, one of the largest and most successful magazine conglomerates in the world, it had been assumed for as far back as Liam could remember that each family member would start with EPH and work his or her way up. Liam hadn’t even left the area to attend college. Instead he’d commuted to Columbia University on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and interned at EPH, working hard to climb the EPH ladder.
Liam didn’t like to make waves. As a second son, he was a peacemaker not a troublemaker.
Until yesterday.
Yesterday would cause all kinds of trouble if word of his after-lunch activities got out.
“I want to hang it in the bedroom.” His mother’s statement interrupted his thoughts.
“Just show me where,” his father answered in an indulgent I’ll-give-you-anything-you-want voice. “Could you help me, son?”
“Sure.”
Carrying the painting, Liam followed his parents into their bedroom. His father helped his mother settle on the bench at the end of the bed. She glanced around the room and then pointed. “I want to hang it there, so it’ll be the first thing I see each morning and the last thing before I turn out the light.”